As far as villains go, Pfc. Bradley Manning is hardly
quintessential. At 5 foot 2 inches tall, his slender frame and
bespectacled image has invoked snickers, sarcasm and according to
reporting over the last two years, a lifetime of bullying.

Bradley Manning

That bullying reached an apparent apex during his time in the
Army. Not only was Manning small, but he was different. He
fought back, at least verbally. And it turned out he’s
gay. “He was a runt, so pick on him. He’s crazy, pick on him.
He’s a faggot, pick on him. The guy took it from every side. He
couldn’t please anyone,” one soldier told The Guardian in
2011. One can’t imagine worse conditions than being
21-year-old Manning in Army boot camp.

Except a 23-year-old Manning incarcerated by the Marines.

The Marines don’t exactly have the best reputation for
dealing with misfits — we have all seen A
Few Good Men, right? Joking aside, Manning’s defense
lawyer this week turned the bright lights of public attention on the
private’s detention at the Quantico brig after he was arrested in May 2010
for accessing and transferring some 700,000 secured and classified
documents to WikiLeaks, until he was finally transferred to Fort
Leavenworth nearly a year later.

Manning’s pre-trial hearings took place Nov. 27 through Dec. 2 at Fort
Meade in Maryland and are expected to continue on Wednesday. For the first
time, his lawyer David Coombs spoke publicly last night before a live
audience. He called Manning’s confinement at Quantico, “a disgraceful
moment in time … it was not only stupid and non-productive. It was
criminal.”

The focus on Manning’s treatment is critical
for a few reasons. As Kevin
Gosztola, ace reporter for FireDogLake and author of The
Dissenter blog told me over the weekend, the testimony this week
from Manning, military psychiatrists and counselors and Manning’s former
jailors had both “in court” and “out of court” impact, with both serving in the
underdog’s favor.

First, in court, Coombs hopes that
military Judge Col Denise Lind will find his client’s
treatment at Quantico so egregious that she will dismiss the various
charges, which
include espionage and aiding the enemy, against him. While
observers say that is not likely, the blunt testimony about
Manning’s nine months in a 48-square-foot cell — where
he was forced to stand naked at attention each morning and at night
sleep with nothing but a “suicide vest” to cover him,
all under solitary conditions that a United Nations official called “cruel
and degrading” — she might go easy on his sentencing
if convicted.

“You reach for the stars and hope you get some sky, or
something like that,” noted Gosztola. “I would say it is
really possible that you would have a motion where (the judge) finds in favor of the defense — in part,” resulting in a reduced sentence.
The defense need only to prove the conditions had a cumulative harmful
effect, not that the Marines were necessarily malicious in their intent.

Still no one wanted to take direct responsibility for isolating
and humiliating Manning, which the psychiatrists said did more
damage to his psyche than anything else. Those psychiatrists —
Capt. Kevin Moore and Capt. William Hoctor — testified that
brig officials repeatedly declined their requests that Manning be
released from POI status.

This shows how rigidly the deck was stacked against Manning
from the start, said Chase Madar, who authored The
Passion of Bradley Manningearlier this year.
“The defense establishing that Manning’s isolation
confinement was against professional medical advice is strong for
the case, as it shows, accurately, that Manning was the victim of
treatment that was certainly sadistic and probably unlawful,”
charged Madar, in an email exchange with Antiwar.com.

“There is no way that the court will see Manning’s
unlawful treatment at Quantico as grounds for dismissing all
charges. It’s a question of politics, the government has so
much invested in this case, the judge would never dismiss the
charges unless she wants to be transferred to the Aleutian Islands
in time for Christmas,” Madar quipped. However, “it
could mitigate the sentence.”

It could also have a strong affect on public opinion, which so
far has been indifferent if not hostile towards Manning’s
cause until now. This is of course the “out of court” —
the public relations — benefit to having a week of testimony
centered on what Manning called the psychological “out of my
mind boredom” of solitary confinement, the “shark attack
environment,” the horror of having to sleep naked and with
bright fluorescent lights illuminating the cell, being awoken every
five minutes while on suicide watch, not to mention walking to and
from short breaks for sunlight in leg irons and having to stand
naked in front of Marines twice your size who clearly think you’re
the scum of the earth.

“I think the military came off looking terrible,”
said Madar, noting the conflicting reports and testimony from
officials who seemed more concerned about who was going to be “left
holding the bag” and avoiding bad press than anything else.

“(The prosecution) has been arguing that throughout, the
military has been ‘professional’ but really they look
bumbling and sadistic,” he added.

The American mainstream has largely ignored Manning since he was
arrested. Part of that is the public’s feeble attention span.
But the corporate media is largely to blame for letting the story drop off the radar over the last year. If not for the
Bradley Manning Support
Network, and the alternative press covering the protests and the
pre-trial’s sluggish developments, Manning would have been
quickly forgotten. His eventual transfer to Fort Leavenworth last
spring was largely credited to his determined and dedicated
grassroots supporters around the world, who have raised hundreds of
thousands of dollars for his defense and kept his name in the press
as much as possible.

This week’s focus on Manning’s treatment and mental
condition brought more media than ever to Fort Meade, which has been
holding pre-trial hearings since last December.

“(It) makes Manning look sympathetic (which is) very
important, as public opinion will be — and already has been —
important in getting humane treatment and eventually clemency for
Manning,” Madar said with a hopeful note.

“Now that people have seen, two-and-a-half years later,
that the leaks did not result in diplomatic Armageddon, the
mainstream media is looking at this with a little more balance.”

Not everyone is convinced, pointing out that The New York
Times hadn’t even bothered to send a correspondent.
Meanwhile, after all its in-depth
coverage of Manning’s initial arrest, The Washington
Post left the story off the front page over the last week, even
the day Manning testified himself — the first anyone has heard
him speak publicly, ever.

Rendering of the Manning trial at Fort Meade last week (credit: AP)

Here’s Chris Floyd on Saturday:

An event of
some newsworthiness, you might think. Manning has admitted leaking
documents that detailed American war crimes in the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. He has been held incommunicado for more than 900
days by the Obama administration. Reports of his treatment at the
hands of his captors have sparked outrage, protests and concern
around the world. He was now going to speak openly in a pre-trial
hearing on a motion to dismiss his case because of that treatment.
Surely such a moment of high courtroom drama would draw heavy media
coverage, if only for its sensationalistic aspects.

But if
you relied on the nation’s pre-eminent journal of news reportage,
the New York Times, you could have easily missed notice of the event
altogether, much less learned any details of what transpired in the
courtroom. The Times sent no reporter to the hearing, but contented
itself with a
brief bit of wire copy from AP, tucked away on Page 3, to note
the occasion.

That story — itself considered of such little
importance by AP that it didn’t even by-line the piece (perhaps the
agency didn’t send a reporter either, but simply picked up snippets
from other sources) — reduced the entire motion, and the long,
intricate, systematic government attack on Manning’s psyche, to a
matter of petty petulance on Manning’s part, a whiner’s attempt to
weasel out of what’s coming to him.

While most thinking
people look beyond the NYT for their news, Floyd notes it would be a
mistake to disregard the paper’s influence entirely.

As we noted
here the other day, the New York Times is the pacesetter for the
American media; it plays a large part in setting the parameters of
acceptable discourse and honing the proper attitude that serious,
respectable people should take toward current events. The paper’s
treatment of Manning’s court appearance is exemplary in this regard.
The case is worth noting, yes, but only briefly, in passing; Manning
himself is a rather pathetic figure whose treatment by the
government, while perhaps not ideal in all respects, has not been
especially harsh or onerous. This is what serious, respectable
people are meant to believe about the case; and millions do.

This of course brings us back to 2010 when Manning was first
arrested. Back then, major newspapers spent a good deal of time and
resources detailing
Manning’s neuroses, the bullying, his “gender identity
crisis,” his emotional outbursts against ranking officers.
Buried in that was of course, the reason why he allegedly leaked all
those documents, many of which uncovered some very unseemly things
about our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, like covering up the real civilian
death toll and allowing the torture of Iraqi dissidents. For Manning, who now risks a lifetime in prison, exposing these things was
the right thing to do. For many Americans, this is a concept so alien that
it apparently warrants derision.

It was all captured in the online chat logs with
hacker-turned-informant Adrian
Lamo, with whom Manning had confided, quite mistakenly. Lamo led
the military authorities to Manning’s door shortly after he told him why he supposedly gave the trove of secret information
to Julian Assange at WikiLeaks (Assange is now part of a broader U.S. federal
investigation of WikiLeaks and now
living under Ecuadoran asylum in order to escape extradition to
Sweden on unrelated sex assault charges):

(02:28:10 am) bradass87 (Manning): I want people to see the
truth …regardless of who they are … because without
information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public…

(1:11:54 pm)
bradass87: and …its important that it gets out …i
feel, for some bizarre reason

(1:12:02
pm) bradass87: it might actually change something

“For his act of conscience, Manning has become the subject
of harsh incarceration himself, as some U.S. pundits and even
members of Congress have called for his execution as a traitor,”
noted activist Ray
McGovern, who once served in the Washington intelligence
community and now works to get people like Manning a fair shake. “At
minimum, however, he has been made an example to anyone else tempted
to tell hard truths.”

Talking to McGovern shortly after Wednesday’s court
proceedings, which he attended, it was clear that the media, nor even the government’s lawyers, are the greatest
challenge to Manning’s future today. President Barack Obama, as well as
many in the Washington national security and diplomatic
establishment had already pronounced Manning as guilty. This is
called “command influence” and it is going to be a
formidable obstacle to the defense’s attempts to sway the
judge for leniency.

“The president himself said (Manning) broke the law,”
McGovern told Antiwar.com. “I consider that to be the
killer.”

However, “(Manning) had his day in court, literally and
figuratively,” added McGovern, who called it an “orderly,
fair” procedure, in which the judge allowed the defense to ask
one officer questions for a straight eight hours and she herself
“had some real penetrating questions, and they were the right
ones.”

“I ended up with an upbeat feeling” that the right
messages came across, said McGovern.

That might be the best Manning can ask for, for now. Yes, as
far as villains go, Manning is atypical, but the government has
tried to paint him as the worst. Meanwhile, the defense wants us to
know that among Manning’s bullies, the Marines are the worst.
The court of American public opinion is fickle — it doesn’t
much like rule-breakers (at least the non-conformist kind), but
bullies aren’t high on the list either. It’s up to
Manning’s supporters to make sure that this court, at
the very least, is eventually persuaded.

Kudos Ms Vlahos. The court of public opinion is not only fickle, it is also a blank slate waiting for the PR industry to decorate. Disguised as 'news media', it chalks up the message of the day and we watch the horrendous outcome time and time again: “Saddam was personally responsible for 9/11”, “Iran is developing a nuclear weapons programme”….. but the majority of the public swallow it hook line and sinker every time.
The attack on Iraq was a long time ago now, next year sees the tenth anniversary and Bradley Manning's courage needs to be seen in the historical context. The actions of a true patriot, and lest we forget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yowqX2ngHl4

And of course, as ironies compound, the elaborate cruelties inflicted upon this prisoner no longer posing any threat to anything except the fabric of falsehoods covering our nation's secret use of illegal power more than completely establish the case for concurring with his purpose in disclosing them: just imagine how they would treat anyone they thought could tell them what they thought they needed to know, regardless of consequences for innocent others. and you summon the beast. They made themselves out to be the kind of power any servant and defender of liberty would oppose with any means at hand.

I have no problem imagining the brutality that was heaped upon Manning. I was on an aircraft carrier during the Viet-Nam War. The Marines ran the brig onboard ship, which was a lower deck compartment. Everytime I walked by the open overhead hatch to this compartment, I could witness prisoners standing at attention, being screamed at by the guards. The prisoners wore hard plastic helmets so that the guards could smack their heads with nightsticks without splitting skulls. Probably still left concussions. It was always over-the-top brutality, 24 hours a day. Every parent should witness stuff like that before letting their kids enlist. I don't know which would be worse – having your kid tortured or having your kid become a torturer.

“There is no way that the court will see Manning’s unlawful treatment at Quantico as grounds for dismissing all charges. It’s a question of politics, the government has so much invested in this case, the judge would never dismiss the charges unless she wants to be transferred to the Aleutian Islands in time for Christmas,” Madar quipped.

Exactly right, Mr. Madar. Proof positive of just how compromised military "justice" is (and always has been).

As for Col. Lind, she will face much worse than a transfer to an unpleasant duty station if she should do the morally right and legally ethical thing and dismiss all charges against Bradley Manning. No, dear readers, you can rest assured that the verdict in this case, like those in most courts martial, has already been rendered. The trial will be a mere piece of Stalinist theater, with all parties (with the lone exception of Manning's civilian defense team) playing their pre-scripted roles.

In the extremely unlikely event that Col. Lind dismisses the charges (military judges are NOT selected for this position based on their disposition toward judicial impartiality, something that is non-existent under military "justice"), she will immediately find herself on the receiving end of the military's legal firepower, probably on trumped up charges. This will result in either her forced retirement from active duty, a conviction on these trumped up charges and imprisonment at Leavenworth, or, worst case scenario, she'll meet with "an unfortunate accident." Oh, and the dismissed charges against Manning will be reinstated, a new show trial will proceed, and the preordained "guilty" verdict will be rendered officially, along with the harshest sentence possible.

There is always hope that his lawyers will sieze the refusal to dismiss as a US Supreme Court appeal, and that the Republican Justices actually obey the constitution and the Geneva Conventions that are part of US Treaty law, that hope has happenned before in Hamdi 8-1 and Hamden 5-4.

I just got a "chill" from reading your post – I hadn't thought about this before – this "an unfortunate accident" business. But why not? Just as drones spying overseas is now evolving into drones flying over us to do spying, the development of the US Seals and other Delta Force troops being used as assassins overseas, could very easily develop into secret assassination squads to deal with American citizens who can't keep their mouths shut or who annoy the Powers That Be. Forget Nixon's "Enemies List" and the IRS, etc. That was "nice guy" revenge; make yourself a problem for the elites running this country soon and you might wake up some morning with lead on the brain

Yes, also how I was raised, never enlist (from a draftee dad). Unfortunately I walked by the high school near work the other day and I overheard a high school kid telling his friends "will you see me off when I join the military, I'm serious, will you?" Sigh … more to fight and maybe die in the wars of empire.

And there is also hope that the Toothy Fairy will come riding to the rescue on a magic carpet of star dust, eliminate the national debt with a waive of the magic wand, and replace all of the fiat money in circulation with pure gold coin. That's at least as realistic a possibility as what you've cited here.

I HAVE to believe that even the depraved, brainless, amoral, co-opted and compromised sociopaths who are prosecuting Bradley Manning realize that they aren't even fit to lick the dirty soles of his shoes. This is why they are going all-out to ensure his demise.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.